Charles angrily.

'I'll tell your Royal Highness why,' replied Luke, who gained courage
as he was put upon the defensive. 'She that 's gone--the Heavens be her
bed!--made her sister promise, in her last hour, never to ask nor look
for favour or benefit from your Royal Highness.'

'I will not believe this,' broke in Charles indignantly; 'you are more
than bold, sir, to dare to tell me so.'

''Tis true as Gospel,' replied the friar. 'Her words were: "Let there be
one that went down to the grave with the thought that loving him was its
best reward! and leave me to think that I live in his memory as I used
in his heart."'

The Prince turned away, and drew his hand across his eyes.

'How came she here--since when?' asked he suddenly.

'Four years back; we came together. I bore her company all the way from
Ireland, and on foot too, just to put the child into the college here.'

'And she has been in poverty all this while?'

'Poverty! faith, you might call it distress!--keeping a little trattoria
in the Viccolo d'Orso, taking sewing, washing--whatever she could;
slaving and starving, just to get shoes and the like for the boy.'

'How comes it, then, that she has yielded at last to write me this?'
said Charles, who, in proportion as his self-accusings grew more
poignant, sought to turn reproach on any other quarter.

'She didn't, nor wouldn't,' said the Fra; ''twas I did it myself. I told
her that she might ease her conscience, by never accepting anything;
that I'd write the petition and go up with it, and that all I 'd ask was
a trifle for the child.'

'She loves him, then,' said Charles tenderly. The friar nodded his head
slowly twice, and muttered, 'God knows she does.'

'And does he repay her affection?'

'How can he? Sure he doesn't know her; he never sees her. When we were
on the way here, he always thought it was his nurse she was; and from
that hour to this he never set eyes on her.'

'What motive was there for all this?'

'Just to save him the shame among the rest, that they couldn't say his
mother's sister was in rags and wretchedness, without a meal to eat.'

'She never sees him, then?'

'Only when he walks out with the class, every Friday; they come down the
hill from the Capitol, and then she's there, watching to get a look at
him.'

'And he--what is he like?'

The friar stepped back, and gazed at the Prince from head to foot in
silence, and then at length said: 'He's like a Prince, sorrow le